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Astra anxiously knocked on the door of Alexis’ room. They'd agreed on hanging out today, but Astra wasn't sure what to expect. It wouldn't just go back to what it was like during the war. Alexis had made that much clear, but that didn't mean it would be unpleasant. Though, it didn't mean that it would be entirely pleasant either. The Door opened,
“Oh hey Astra, come on in.” Alexis gestured her into the room.
“Hey Alexis,” Astra replied, pretending she wasn't desperately keeping herself from spiraling. She was hit with a wave of nostalgia as she walked into Alexis' room. It looked almost exactly the same as it had when she'd last been in it 4 years ago. Only slightly less lived in since she'd moved her stuff out after the war.
“Sooooo, what did you want to do?” Astra asked.
“What, I have to plan everything?” Alexis joked.
“You were the one who wanted to do this! Planning falls to you!” Astra retorted. 'Was I supposed to have planned something? Did we agree on this? Should I have planned something anyway? Is she gonna go back to hating me again!?'
“You didn't want to do this?” Alexis was getting anxious now.
“That's not what I meant!” Astra's heart was pounding; this conversation seemed like it might end with her getting punched in the face again.
“Well you didn't want to do this sooner,” Alexis accused.
“I thought you wanted me dead! That's not exactly the best motivation to invite someone over for a sleepover!” She knew she was only digging herself deeper into a hole, but if she was going to go down, she was going to go down fighting. Astra braced for impact when Alexis started laughing. Astra looked at her incredulously,
“What?” She demanded.
“Astra, the whole reason I was mad at you is because I don't want you dead.” Alexis giggled. Astra just blinked.
“Oh, yeah. I guess that's true,” she felt pretty silly now, but tried not to show her embarrassment. When Alexis finished laughing she pulled Astra into a hug, and buried her face in Astra's … chest. She signed contentedly,
“I missed you,” she said, her words coming out muffled. Astra smiled ruefully,
“Well I suppose that makes one person in the entire multiverse.” She thought for a moment,
“Two counting Sterling.” Alexis looked up at her confused,
“Two people who miss you?”
“Uh, … yeah” Astra mumbled, not meeting Alexis’ eyes.
“Astra?” When she didn't reply Alexis pressed harder,
“Astra what were you going to say? Two people in the multiverse who what?”
“Wanted me alive,” Astra said soft enough it could barely be heard. Despite Astra's best attempts, Alexis heard her loud and clear.
“It should be 3” Alexis stated hiding her mortification. Astra barked a laugh,
“So I've been told.” After that Alexis just hugged her tighter. Astra hugged her back as her thoughts started spiraling again. 'Should I have lied? No, she would've known that I was lying. But now she's sad. What could I have done? How could I have prevented this? You should've just kept your stupid mouth shut.'
“We don't have to do anything special y'know,” Alexis interrupted the tornado of thoughts inside Astra's head.
“We could just stay here and cuddle.” She suggested.
“Did you miss my cuddles?” Astra asked cheekily.
“I missed all of you.” Alexis replied earnestly.
“But mostly my boobs?” Astra smirked. Alexis lightly smacked the side of her head before pulling away from said boobs.
“Shut up Astra.”
Astra started tapping the runes on her arm as Alexis walked toward the bed.
“What are you doing?” Alexis asked her.
“I'm not laying down in denim,” Astra said as she finished, changing her clothes to a green tank top, brown sweat shorts, and white fluffy socks that stopped just below her knees.
“Oh, good idea! Lay down while I get changed.” Alexis ordered, getting off the bed and going over to her dresser. Astra sat down on Alexis' bed and sort of just tried to lean back against the headboard. Which wasn't very nice, but she didn't want to make herself too comfortable. Alexis came back wearing a black crop top and red sweatpants. She crawled over Astra to the other side of the bed before saying,
“Get under the covers dummy!”
“Ok, jeez” Astra said, trying to seem nonchalant, but Alexis saw right through it.
“Astra,” she prompted.
“Hmm,” Astra replied, looking at her.
“You can relax. I'm not looking for an opportunity to kick you out or something. I want to hang out with you. Like you said, I asked for this.”
Astra looked at her closer, then took a deep breath letting out as many of her anxieties as she could. If only for tonight. Alexis smiled up at her, before Astra looked back at her and said,
“Same goes for you.” Alexis blinked in confusion,
“What?”
“You can relax. I'm not looking for an opportunity to leave. I wouldn't be here if I didn't want to be.”
Alexis stared at her for a bit longer, and Astra didn't break eye contact once. This seemed like the most serious she'd been this entire conversation. So Alexis took her own deep breath and realized she'd been holding in a lot more stress than she thought. She was still afraid of opening up to Astra again. She'd been afraid since their group had first formed. She was afraid that Astra would disappear again, or hurt her some other way. She'd never actually been mad at Astra, that was just easier. Alexis tried to let all of that out in one breath, and as she leaned back against Astra's shoulder, she felt more relaxed than she had in months.
“Okay,” Alexis finally replied,
“Thank you.”
Astra just wordlessly wrapped her arms around Alexis, who snuggled further into her shoulder. They stayed like that for a while, just chilling in comfortable silence. Astra looked around the room making a bit of a game for herself in seeing how it had changed. A bit like a spot the difference game. Though the first thing that caught her eye was something that came from during the war.
“Heh, you still have that?” She asked, pointing to an object on a high shelf. Alexis looked up curiously and then quickly looked away.
“Oh, yeah. It was the first ever gift you gave me, and it was when I was still being pretty mean to you, so yeah I kept it.” Alexis replied sheepishly.
“Honestly I thought you'd thrown it away or burned it or something. You didn't seem too happy when I gave it to you.” Astra chuckled.
“Well it's not every day that someone rips out a demon's heart, gives it to you, and says ‘happy Valentine's Day’ before just cheerfully walking off. So forgive me for being caught off guard” Alexis said, being playfully defensive.
“Of course you wouldn't hear that every day, you'd only hear that on Valentine's Day” Astra rationalized. Alexis just laughed.
“I'll give you that, it was Valentine's Day. It would've been way weirder if it wasn't.”
“Yeah, though you didn't just keep it, you went full mad scientist and preserved it in a jar.” Astra looked over at her, impressed.
“There was another soldier at the agency who was into taxidermy, and even though it's not the same thing I figured they might know where to look.” Alexis admitted.
“You're right it's not the same thing at all” Astra replied.
“It wasn't easy, but I got help from Sterling who thought, and I quote: “oh my gosh Alexis, that's adorable!” So he was pretty happy to help.”
“I'm gonna have to agree, that's pretty adorable.” Astra said, hugging Alexis tighter. Alexis smiled softly,
“That was actually the first thing that made me think that maybe you could be on our side, and not just, I don't know, a spy for Lucifer or something. Like I said, it caught me off guard, but you just looked so genuine when you gave it to me, and at that point I'd never said a single good thing about you, so I thought maybe you were just a goofy little dork like you seemed.” Alexis' nostalgic smile faltered slightly as she remembered times after their group formed when Astra had been just as dorky and endearing, usually only when she was around Kayla or Benny, but she'd heard Sterling say he'd seen her act that way too. It had hurt that Astra hadn't acted that way around her, but it had also helped her separate Astra and Diamos. Alexis was a bit mad that Astra hadn't given her the benefit of the doubt and started trying to be her friend again, but she could admit that was a bit hypocritical of her since she didn't act that way towards Astra. She'd told herself that it was different and since Astra had lied it was her job to make it right, but that was mostly so she could stay mad since after the first week the Sharp Gang had formed, she didn't want to cry herself to sleep anymore.
“You falling asleep already?” Astra asked, snapping Alexis out of her thoughts.
“Huh, oh no just thinking.” She replied shakily.
“Oh, … alright.” Astra clearly wanted to say more, but she didn't really know what to say so she just didn't say anything. An awkward silence overtook them before Alexis said,
“I'm sorry.” Astra looked at her a bit concerned.
“For what?” She asked.
“For being so awful to you. I could never just be nice to you, even when you were trying so hard to placate me.” She looked up at Astra, tears welling in her eyes,
“I'm sorry,” she said again.
“Oh, honey,” Astra pulled Alexis closer into their hug and Alexis buried her face in Astra's shoulder. Astra felt Alexis’ tears fall onto her shoulder as Alexis again repeated,
“I'm sorry.”
“It's ok, I hurt you in a way that most people have never been hurt. I wouldn't have forgiven me either.” Astra tried to reassure her.
“But you were too scared to even talk to me!” Alexis' yell was muffled by Astra's shoulder,
“It's my fault you were so afraid of me!”
“Hey, it's not your fault that I'm a coward.” Astra asserted. Alexis pulled off her and looked her in the eyes,
“You're not a coward! You're one of the bravest people I know!” Astra just looked at her dumbfounded.
“You told us what you did Astra, all we had to do was ask,”
“Yeah, after you had all caught me.”
“No, you were free. You could've ran away, but you told us anyway.”
“After it was made clear that you were on my side, I wouldn't even look at you when you were working with Ulitis.”
“Who clearly wanted to do you harm, I wouldn't have looked at you either.”
“And I did run away the first time, so you deserved an explanation.”
“Which you gave us.”
“I still ran away the first time!”
“Well, not exactly,”
“You're right it's worse than that. I faked my own death so that you wouldn't come after me.”
“After fixing the mistake you made.”
“I didn't fix it, I just got rid of all the demons.”
“Because you realized it was wrong, and you wanted to make sure we were ok”
“Don't play it up like it was some big thing, it was the bare minimum!”
“It was more than Ulitis would've done.” That finally made Astra stop arguing. She thought about it. It was probably more than Ulitis would've done…but,
“That doesn't prove I'm not a coward.” she insisted. Alexis thought about that for a second.
“Ok maybe you were a coward back then, but you're not a coward now. Let's use another example. As soon as you learned that you made a Kaiju apocalypse in Heath’s world you started trying to help him, even though he was pretty mad at you.” Alexis pointed out. Astra looked away.
“You're still helping him even though he was pretty mad at you after the whole Eloise debacle. And,” Alexis sighed,
“That whole…thing was pretty ballsy.” She admitted. Astra winced,
“Yeah, that was a pretty bad call on my part.”
“Why did you do that by the way? I know to put the curse on her, but there was almost certainly a better way to do it.” Alexis asked, genuinely curious.
“Honestly, I thought you'd all be fine. Usually her arena battles are made with regular people in mind, so I figured that you all being seasoned warriors would fare really well. I didn't think any of the overseers would have a good enough grasp on your powers to pose you any kind of threat. Also last time I was in the arena I absolutely swept the competition, so I figured if worst came to worst I'd just get you out of there.” Astra smiled sheepishly,
“Didn't exactly work out the way I planned.” Alexis shook her head,
“Anyway, the point is, even if you were a coward back then, you aren't one anymore. You've helped us clean up the messes you've made, and you haven't run away since. That was why I was so surprised to hear that you were scared of me.” She said earnestly.
“Maybe not, but I still don't get why you aren't all treating me like you used to.” Astra grumbled.
“Because we can tell you're trying to be better. You've helped us out with a lot of things after that and beforehand, we can all tell that you're not a bad person. So most of us have forgiven you. Kayla, Stirling, and Benny never held it against you in the first place; Mara and Tayrun both forgave you pretty fast; I'm pretty sure Heath forgave you after you helped him out with that thing in his dimension a few weeks ago; and obviously I've forgiven you, for both that and the war.” Alexis smiled up at Astra.
“You're too forgiving for your own good,” Astra said, lightly pushing Alexis’ shoulder.
“Maybe,” Alexis conceded,
“But we're just forgiving enough for yours.” Astra smiled back at Alexis and settled farther down.
“Ok, thank you.” she decided to let Alexis win this one, besides it was the answer Astra liked better anyway.
“You're welcome, now I'm done talking. That's always been more of Sterling’s thing anyway.” Alexis muttered.
“You falling asleep now?” Astra joked.
“I'm about ready to yeah.” Alexis replied.
“Ok.” Astra slightly picked Alexis up, slid them farther under the covers, and pulled her closer. Alexis snuggled into Astra in turn, and they both fell asleep happily in each other's arms.